Windows sockets is a popular network programming interface that is widely used by applications. Windows sockets enable third party code (called Layered Service Providers or LSPs) to be inserted in all applications (that use the Windows socket interface) by means of another interface called Service Provider Interface (SPI). There is currently no mechanism available to selectively include/exclude LSPs on a per application/per process basis. This is problematic because ALL LSPs installed on the system get included in ALL applications even though they may be interested only in traffic from certain applications. This also results in instability of the system and much customer pain, since any LSP installed on the system also gets included in System Critical Services (SCS).